Roundtable Reality Check - Leadership, Training, & Firehouse Culture

Roundtable Reality Check | Leadership, Training & Firehouse Culture | Wind The Q Podcast

Three experienced fire service leaders. One table. No scripted answers.

In this episode of Wind The Q, Lt. Dodson is joined by returning guest Lt. Adam Sambor, along with first-time guests Lt. Kyle Hudson and Training Officer Lt. Robison, for an honest conversation about the state of today's fire service.

From leadership and accountability to training, morale, and building a strong firehouse culture, this roundtable dives into the challenges firefighters and officers face every day. The discussion includes personal experiences, practical lessons, and straightforward advice that can help firefighters at every stage of their careers.

In this episode, we discuss:

• What separates good departments from great ones
• Leadership that creates trust and accountability
• Why meaningful training matters more than checking a box
• Building and maintaining a positive firehouse culture
• Common mistakes made by new officers
• Advice for firefighters preparing for the next step in their careers
• Lessons learned from years on the job

Whether you're a probationary firefighter, seasoned company officer, instructor, or chief officer, this episode offers practical insight you can apply on your very next shift.

Subscribe to Wind The Q for real conversations, leadership lessons, and the stories behind the sirens. If this episode brought you value, share it with your crew and help us continue raising the standard across the fire service.

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This episode Includes dynamic content. If you feel impressed to help support the show, follow the link below. If not, please continue to like, share, follow, and subscribe for more great content!

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Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:19

You ever notice how everybody in this job says they want to get better? Every station, every crew, every shift. We need to train more. We need to be sharper. We need to get back to the basics. You hear it constantly. But when you watch what really happens, it doesn't match up. Wanting to be better and doing what it takes to be better are not the same thing at all. This job will let you believe showing up, running calls, and doing the routine equals improvement. And it doesn't. Real growth happens when something goes wrong. When you get exposed, when you realize you're not as good as you thought you were, and you lean into it. But that's what most people try to avoid. It's easier to stay comfortable, it's easier to train over what you're good at. It's easier to blend in. And if you're not careful, you'll realize you haven't improved in a long time. That's what this conversation is about training, standards, and accountability. So let's get into it. This podcast is about the real conversations. It's about the job, it's about the culture, and what it takes to do it right. Today we've got a round table with Lieutenant Sambor, Lieutenant Hudson, and Lieutenant Robinson. Each brings a different background, but they all care about the standard. So let's go around the table. Tell us who you are, how long you've been in the fire service. Sanbor, start us off.

SPEAKER_06 2:15

My name's Adam Sanbor. I've been in the fire service for about 12 years now. I've been with uh our current department for about four years. Cool.

SPEAKER_04 2:26

Kyle.

SPEAKER_01 2:26

I am uh Kyle Hudson. I've been also in the fire service for approximately twelve years. I'm right at five years in our current department. Uh I've got some prior service at two other departments prior to this.

SPEAKER_07 2:39

Go for it. I'm Jared Robison. Uh I have 23 years of experience. Uh a combination of three years volunteer and over 20 in uh career.

SPEAKER_06 2:50

You are so soft spoken. I'm sorry. You can't see him, but Jared's almost in 70s. He is old. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 3:01

Alright, I'll keep mine simple. Lieutenant Dodds and agent officer focused on culture, mindset, and consistency. Let's get into this. So let's talk about training versus effectiveness. Uh training's common. Being effective or having effective training is not common. So why isn't training consistently producing better firefighters?

SPEAKER_01 3:22

I think there's a bunch of issues with that. I think that uh, you know, a lot of times training, we have some of those training isms where people know what's coming. We're not very good at keeping the, hey, this is what training is this week is secret to where everybody gets the same experience. So a lot of times people already have an idea or an indication of what training they're doing for that week. So they'll go out there and as a crew prepare. So you're not getting a representation of what those individuals will be able to do directly off the truck. You're getting a representation of what people have rehearsed knowing what's coming. That's true. So that kind of messes up the consistency of training a little bit throughout the time. That makes sense. How about you guys?

SPEAKER_07 4:00

I think uh some inconsistency is because just depending on the training, you can't always have hardcore training either. Um and then also depending on your firefighters, some places and some uh certain states kind of lower the standard for other volunteer departments also, so then you have to incorporate being able to get them through certain trainings without really punishing them for not having the resources and training and knowledge and experience that some other places get.

SPEAKER_03 4:35

We've talked about that before, how different it is. I mean you can go I mean even Polk County, not to not to jab at Polk County, I I live in Polk County, but how different it is there. Um you can go ten, fifteen, twenty miles down the road and we've got it good. I mean our oldest frontline truck's 2018. And I think maybe me and Sambohr talked about this where if you've only worked here, you only know what we've got and you don't appreciate it. But once you once you start seeing perspective. Yeah, what other people don't have or how hard they got or they got old trucks or old gear or whatever, then you start appreciating what we've got.

SPEAKER_06 5:17

Yeah. I think a big cancer to the training culture is the uh complacency, obviously. I think you've got a lot of guys that you know they're in the job for years and years and years, and they think they've done enough training, they know what to do in every scenario, and they don't think they could be met with anything new that would challenge them, but of course that's not true. Yeah. You know, this job, it's very easy to get complacent.

SPEAKER_01 5:40

Well, and to piggyback off what he's saying, also we've got a mismatch right now where we have a bunch of guys who have a long amount of experience. They've been here for a very long time. Now, whether that equates to actual experience or just the same year repeated over and over and over again is a different circum circumstance, but then also just the nature of the fire service and the way we operate. You have a bunch of people that retire at one time, and then we're replacing those ranks with brand new guys. Some places right now in our city, you have, you know, firemen that are senior firemen in three years. You've got lieutenants that have been here less than five years. Yep. And that all comes to an issue to where we're there's a training mismatch on where, yeah, there's a lot of guys out there that have trained and want to be better, and they want to do advanced stuff and get better all the time. But we still have to make sure that these new guys who don't have that requisite knowledge are being brought up to the standard as well. So we have that problem where, yeah, everybody wants to do advanced training and do the cool guy stuff, but sometimes the basics are what we need to be good at.

SPEAKER_04 6:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:35

Getting off the truck, getting a hose line, going searching very well, doing those things are what's going to make a notifiable or noticeable difference in the future, as opposed to some of that super advanced stuff that's very, very low or low frequency, high acuity, you know.

SPEAKER_07 6:50

So Yeah, and I would say also that training facilities, not everyone has a training facility. Not everybody has the personnel to put on good quality training. If you have one person in the training division, it's pretty hard for him to set up and or him or her to manage everything uh you know by themselves. Yeah, that's true.

SPEAKER_06 7:13

Luckily we have some pretty motivated personnel in training, fortunately for us. Okay, that's true.

SPEAKER_01 7:18

Well, and it's not just those guys. You know, a lot of time what the best part for them is people that are actually in training is to be able to facilitate, to be able to get us everything that we need to be successful. And I think a lot of the burden of training guys needs to be on the company level to where uh an individual that sits in training has done everything they can do to set us up for success, and all we have to do is go out there and execute. And I think a lot of times we focus too hard on, hey, there's a guy that's got training attached to his name. Well, that doesn't mean he can do everything that needs to be done. His job is to facilitate that. Hey, we have the facilities for you, we have everything that you need, everything that you requested as far as materials. Now you need to go out there and execute, and we forget that. I think a lot of times we rely on the training department to provide everything for us. Well, that's not their job. Their job is to set up and facilitate and to grade and to and to give us what we need to be successful, but the actual execution is our job. They're not going to be with us on the truck when that day comes. We need officers to lead and to train their guys to acknowledge to a level where they're successful. That's what we mean.

SPEAKER_06 8:18

Yep. That's a lot of that basic uh training operational stuff that you were talking about earlier comes into play too, because if we have a jam-up motivated training center or training uh officer staff, that they're gonna be would be able to facilitate some of those like more niche operational training scenarios that people really get fired up about. But at the officer level, we should be really beating in that basic stuff too. So it's not even a question when we go out there and do just a normal drill. You know, everybody knows exactly what they're doing at all times for that. Yep.

SPEAKER_07 8:51

And I agree with that because at a company level, I mean, you don't have to have the facility to do the basics.

SPEAKER_04 8:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 8:58

I mean, you can pretty much big pick anything. I saw y'all drilling out the other day doing a spaghetti hose and then doing a little writ training. Yep. I mean, that's all it takes, it's just the basics over and over and over until there's second nature, so that way when the crap hits the fan, you fall back on your basics. That's right.

SPEAKER_06 9:18

And we've we've pulled our cross lay a multitude of times with our brand new rookie, and sure enough, last night we had a little bitty car fire in somebody's driveway, pulled that thing off no problem. That's perfect.

SPEAKER_03 9:30

Good deal. So on the on the y'all talked about company level. What is what's something on the company level that we can do that will immediately improve training quality. Hit your basics. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 9:46

I mean that is honestly, yeah. I mean, that actually makes a big difference motivation-wise too. Because if you're just especially like a I think I said it last time I was on here, there was a Saturday that we came in and we just threw the 24-foot ladder and raised it up over and over again. I think each of us did about 10 times a piece.

SPEAKER_04 10:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 10:03

Not only does it build morale, but it builds these guys inspirationally to want to do more and get better at it. And it's almost like a camaraderie experience rather than just like a work.

SPEAKER_03 10:13

And you've the the company officer has got to be out there with them.

SPEAKER_06 10:16

Oh, absolutely. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:17

I think that is a a huge deal. Well, but the issue you have is, and and and this is an issue we're running to here at our level, is that we have an influx of new guys just because of retirements, and we're getting new ones every six months, whatever it takes to train them now. Well, the guys that are at the the crews that are super aggressive and that love to train get that um every day we're gonna come in, we're gonna train. That's just the reality of my job here at the fire service. They get used to that, they love it, they enjoy it, that's the expectation. Well, you know, in December, yeah, when the next group of people's hired and trained, they're gonna have to send those brand new guys to the same gung ho training forward officers that are at the company level. Well, what do we do with those guys that we were just developing for six months who are now gonna go somewhere else that may not have the same environment? And it's up to them to really kind of determine what they want to be as a fireman. Do you want to be the gung-ho get it done guy, or do you want to be a couch potato? But you're not gonna get a hundred percent conversion of guys who are like, hey, I'm gonna continue on my own training when I don't have to. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 11:17

That's why I'm trying to hammer my new guy's head just every single shift we try to do something.

SPEAKER_03 11:23

You're you it's uh we all say we wouldn't ever do it or or whatever, but we're all products of our environment. 100%. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:30

And we've seen that play out, you know, over the years that I've been here, you know, and it's lucky for me because I'm at a station that's got a lot of gung-ho guys just based on what trucks are stab stationed there. But we've had guys come into this station and the station I'm assigned to, both, you know, where they they come in and they're doing great, and you tell everybody, hey man, that guy's gonna be great. He's gonna be a career fireman, he's killing it, he's great at everything, he's teachable, he's approachable. Well, give that guy two years at a station that runs one call with two burned-out individuals who don't want to be here anymore. The next thing you know, that same individual that was the best fireman you had in a long time is now a problem. That's right. And it's just an environment thing. He doesn't change anything, he's just gotten complacent, and the people around him have let his environment be one where training's not prioritized.

SPEAKER_07 12:14

Or vice versa, and they get hired and they get stuck with that kind of crew, and then they get labeled as lazy and not worth anything. But then you pull them off that and you put them with a good crew, and all of a sudden, oh, he's not that guy, actually.

SPEAKER_06 12:27

Yep. Massive culture shift.

SPEAKER_01 12:29

But I think that's a fire service systemic problem because there's not a fire department anywhere in the area that I know of that has got a hundred percent buy-in on training and being better. Oh no. Everywhere you go, there's somebody that's close to that retirement age that just wants to chill out. Yep. Um, and you can't do that when you're developing the next generation of people that take your spot. You just can't. So it's a struggle.

SPEAKER_07 12:50

The 10%, 80%, 10% rule. Yeah. And that applies to everywhere. Yep. You got 10% that shouldn't be here, shouldn't be in the fire service. Sorry, it's not for everybody. Yep. 80% who come in and do their job, whether that's competent or not, is a different story. And then 10% of the hard hitters who are gung-ho, ready to go do the extra. So all right.

SPEAKER_03 13:13

Well, let's talk about this kind of segues pretty good. Let's talk about skill development. And we'll touch on truck work too, but uh skill skill gaps become obvious on the fire ground. We can we can play it off here. Even if we go out to the back pad and we're training, you can still you can fluff it and play it off. But when tones drop and you actually run that fire, that start stuff starts showing up. Um what do you think's missing when it comes to building real usable skill?

SPEAKER_07 13:47

I think one thing is the realism when you train. You have to keep it as real as you can. Um I'm a big guy of using live victims. Yeah. Obviously not for every drill, depending on what's going on, but I feel like that really plays into it because I've seen it time and time again. They uh go in and they're so used to dragging a mannequin that when they grab a foot and they realize it's a human, they'll all of a sudden all delicate and don't know what to do. They're looking at me like, Am I supposed to drag him still? And I'm like, Yes. Yeah, get him out. Yeah. Uh I think that does play a big pon in it. And just, you know, go out there and do what you're supposed to do every single time and do it like it's real life. Put your hood on. Put your hood on, put your all your gear on.

SPEAKER_06 14:35

That realism factor I think is a massive deal too, because we talked about that setting up for training that we have in this upcoming week. And just kind of going back and forth like, should we use a real person to go down there? Should we use a dummy because the floor's gonna be dirty, they're gonna get beat up consistently, you know, all day for the each exercise. And you know, it's just it's hard to replace you know, an actual body, you know, carrying somebody, dragging somebody and stuff with a a mannequin that's just gonna fold up on your fingers and it's not very realistic.

SPEAKER_01 15:08

Yeah. Well, and I'm gonna take a different approach. For for me, I think that it's important that we have the training as realistic as possible because obviously that gets us as close as we can go to the physiological effects that we get when we run these calls, but we're never gonna get all the way there. You're never gonna get to that feeling these guys are having when they're coming around the bend and they're officers and hey, we got a header, it's gonna be a working fire when we get there, because we've had that happen recently. There's some guys that have just not trained themselves to overcome the physiological effects of that yet. Yeah. So no matter what we train them, we have to expose them more and more to more to call volume to where they get used to that dump of adrenaline because we've got guys that if you go out on the training ground right now, they're gonna kill it. They're great, they do exactly what they're supposed to do, they're teachable. But you take them out on a fire scene and they're trying to not throw up. Yeah. Like because it's just the adrenaline dump just affects them so profoundly. And I think we, you know, it's hard to overcome that sometimes, but the closer you get training to it realistic, the better. That's why, in my opinion, much what Jared said, I would prefer you don't tell anybody anything when you go to training. Hey, these units come to this place at this time, and when they get there, you say go. Yeah, that way there's there's that immediate dump of adrenaline, and they're overcoming that as opposed to we sit around and we talk about, hey, today we're gonna do search training, you're gonna show up and how we've done it in the past. And I think with Jared being in our training division now at this time, we're gonna get a lot closer to those realism things that would give people that edge when they actually go on a structure fire because that's where we're seeing the failures is the real cause. Yeah, yeah. You know, we're seeing some training failures, but it's not as common as when you're actually on scene doing things. People just do crazy stuff sometimes.

SPEAKER_06 16:43

Fortunately and unfortunately, it's it's impossible to manifest or replicate that environment anyway. So it's yeah, you can't. It's it's tough. Because I mean, yeah, I mean, that's gonna be your best training tool. I mean, actually going and doing it.

SPEAKER_01 16:56

Well, and it's also, you know, and this is probably an unpopular opinion, but it's uh it's an officer problem because the way the officer acts and the way the officer approaches calls is the way that the crew is gonna approach the calls. I mean, when we're going to a structure fire from my station with my guys, and I'm yelling, hey boys, let's go. You know, we we got it going, and as soon as we get there, we're looking for work. If I have to go up to who's in charge and put my face up to their face so they can at least see me and give me a job, I'm gonna do that. Yep. Not every crew has got that. There's a lot of crews out there where they know their officers are not super gung-ho, so they're just gonna sit back and let things you know kind of happen until someone tells them what to do. And then other people are just actively trying to find work. Now there's a point where that actively trying to find work goes into where it's you know a little bit difficult for everybody to manage the scene. You're doing too much, but you know, you want to show up and have to hold the guys back from doing their job. You don't want to have to push everybody forward because they're not getting anything done that way. That's right.

SPEAKER_06 17:48

I do think you can develop that mentality though on the training ground, to be honest with you. I think a lot of this is what I see that's very, very frustrating. It's when we do do these live burns and this like really awesome training, the training's putting on, you see these company officers, they're just so demotivated. You can tell they don't want to be there. They think they already know everything that's gonna be taught by everybody. And I think that that just immediately puts a damper on the morale of their crew. Because if their officer is gonna be super stoked and super pumped up trying to do stuff, they're gonna feed off of that, and it's just gonna spread essentially. And then I think, like I said, once that training is established and you get that, you know, uh rapport with your guys like that, I think that that bleeds into the actual fire ground operations.

SPEAKER_07 18:33

Yeah, I agree with that. I like to see a sense of urgency, which we lack a lot of times during training. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 18:40

Yeah, but I think that's a product of our own environment because for many years that urgency wasn't prioritized. And now we're in a, you know, we're in a a transition here where we have a bunch of young guys and young officers that are gung-ho and still love the fire service. So we're we're trying to break some of that. But I think, you know, in in my early years here, I don't think we prioritize that sense of urgency as much as we prioritize going down a checklist and hitting every single checklist on the box. We prioritize the comp you know completely doing it, not necessarily doing it with that violence of action, that urgency. And for me, and I'm sure for you guys as well, that urgency is what really makes the difference. Because if you get in there, you know, on a structure fire or any kind of real bad call that we run, there's a couple seconds that can make the difference between life or death. So to me, the most important part is the guys are getting off the truck and they're doing those things that they know they need to do because they've been taught by their company officers, and they do it effectively and quickly with a sense of urgency. Because that's what's gonna make the difference between a good outcome and a bad scene and a bad outcome. It's not that we checked every box. You can check every box over a course of four hours and have a bad outcome. But if you get off with a sense of urgency, generally your outcome is going to be better. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 19:46

And we're inundated with box checking exercises. That's right. I mean, every aspect of this job.

SPEAKER_07 19:51

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: And the company officers need to be training those younger guys too to know their jobs and know kind of what's going on on every call. Yeah. Like not waiting for a direct command to them. It's a car fire, guess what you're doing? That's you're probably pulling the bumper line and you're going to work.

SPEAKER_01 20:07

Also, on that caveat, too, it's a little bit important as well that we, you know, we motivate the people that need motivation, but we also have to put a rein on the people that don't, because we at my station, I have aggressive guys. We're all aggressive. We all are always looking for work, doing what we're supposed to do. Well, there's some situations where that aggressiveness is dangerous. There's some situations where you need to tell your guys, hey, in this particular situation we were just on, you don't need to be look look around at your surroundings. Look at what the situation we were in that was compromised. Like this, you know, even though you're an aggressive fireman and I love that, or an aggressive sergeant, I love that, you still have to think about what you're doing. Yeah. Because I, you know, that's the part of being an officer that you have to give up as a fireman. And you know, Derek, I was an aggressive, want to get after it guy. I remember. And I still am that guy, but now I have to think about safety.

SPEAKER_03 20:59

It's a different mindset.

SPEAKER_01 21:00

Or my guy, I, you know, at the end of the day, you want to do everything you can do to, you know, mitigate the situation, but also I'm accountable for those individuals. Like if they're too aggressive and they do something crazy, that's a me problem. That's not a them problem because I train them to be aggressive. But I always have to balance that doing work, but making sure I take my guys home safe. Yeah. We're going to make any sacrifice we can when it's warranted, but we don't need to do that, you know, in a situation where there's no positive outcome that can be ascertained. Like, why?

SPEAKER_06 21:30

You know? Moth to the flame theory. I mean, that's one of the biggest transitional things is going from a sergeant to an officer is being able to dial that back and actually look at more of a broader view, broader scope of everything instead of just running straight in like you want to.

SPEAKER_03 21:46

I think one thing that I've learned the the higher you promote, the further you step back. You have to, yes. That you know, sometimes physically, if I'm in command, I want to be back over there somewhere. I'll come find you. Yeah. But also, as far as you're involved with your crew, you have to take that step back. A hundred percent. That way you can see the whole view. And like you said, some people are are gung ho, and that's awesome. But you need to be able to see all right, if they go in there like this, this is what's gonna happen. Correct.

SPEAKER_06 22:18

So it'll Big thing to do that I've noticed, or something that I do with my new guys every time I get a rookie is on the way back from these calls, giving them potential outcomes of different choices we could have made or explanations on why I made those decisions. Because I think that communication component of it is extremely important for somebody who's just getting molded into the fire service so they understand why we did that, why we want to do that, that kind of thing.

SPEAKER_03 22:42

It's easy for them to sit in the back and say, why, why did he want us to do that? So I think that's that's a good idea.

SPEAKER_01 22:49

Well, and also in in in the past, and I know you've been part of this because we were there together, there's a lot of situations where you come into a you have a bad incident, maybe it's one that was, you know, very, very low frequency, very high acuity, and you come back to the station, then one, you know, everybody wants to do an after action. Well, a lot of times the knee-jerk reaction is, well, nobody died. We did a great job. Yeah. And there's every single call that we go on, especially the ones that are low acuity, high or low frequency, high acuity, excuse me, there's something we could do better. Absolutely. That's what the discussion should be. Yeah, we mitigated this situation effectively, but how could we be better? It doesn't mean we have to assign blame. It doesn't mean that we have to say, oh, we did a bad job. But to come in here and say, oh, well, everything went great. There's nothing we could change, that's a cop out. That's not being accountable to yourself saying, hey, I could have done this better and made a better outcome. Or my guys miss this, or we miss this. We have to be very honest with ourselves about what we could do better. That way in the future we don't replicate those mistakes and we have a better outcome on those, you know, low frequency, high acuity calls, which we're starting to run more of, believe it or not. You know, it's crazy.

SPEAKER_07 23:56

Self-reflection. Yep. Yeah. That comes back to the training too. You know, people want to do what they know they're good at instead of doing the stuff they're they're not so great at.

SPEAKER_03 24:05

That's right. They want to be comfortable. All right, so let's talk about complacency and performance decline. We've talked, we've talked all over this already this morning. Experience can lead to growth, but it can also lead to the stagnation. Um, we talked about that a while ago. But when do y'all think firefighters begin to plateau?

SPEAKER_07 24:26

I think around that seven-year mark, everyone in the fire service hits it. Yep. And they all go, is this what I want to do? What am I doing with my life? Yep. Is this really what I signed up for? And it hits everybody. Sometimes it's ten years, sometimes it's five years. You might even hit it again at the 15-year mark.

SPEAKER_06 24:43

Especially if you're not running just a a litany of structure fires. I mean, I think that that again, you know, not only hones in your training, but also affects the morale.

SPEAKER_03 24:53

I think it does too.

SPEAKER_07 24:54

Yeah, call volume definitely plays with that.

SPEAKER_03 24:57

I mean, that's that's the whole part that we signed up for. That's why we came here. And then when you're not getting it.

SPEAKER_01 25:04

Yeah. Well, and I think a lot of people run in that that situation where, especially when you have as much turnover as we have now in the fire service as a whole, to where you're middle of the pack in about four years. Yeah. You know enough to be dangerous, you know enough that a younger guy relies on you for their information. Your officer, you know, you may be like in the situation we're in where there's a lieutenant on the truck that was in a recruit class with a fireman on the truck. That happens all the time. My entire recruit class was on the truck together last two weeks ago.

SPEAKER_04 25:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:32

All three of us that are left. So you have everybody on the truck has got, you know, I have prior experience, but everybody on the truck here has less than five years experience. And you're getting that more often. But those guys are now calling falling into that complacency a lot quicker because, you know, it used to be a decade before you were the senior man, you know, the senior firefighter. Well, now it may be three years or less, and you're teaching a new guy how to be a new guy when you just learned. So you're hitting that complacency stage a lot quicker because the organization is putting you there, really. And it's your choice whether, hey, am I going to continue to be better and grow and understand that I don't know everything? Even as officers, we have to do that. Like, hey, I don't know everything, especially not how the operation goes here. You know, so we have to keep constantly learning those things as we go forward and not getting complacent. It's a it's a concerted effort to do that every shift.

SPEAKER_03 26:20

Well, we've got some guys that are lieutenants with five years.

SPEAKER_07 26:25

I believe so. Some around there.

SPEAKER_01 26:27

That's been a topic of uh Well, we're four and a half, and then I'm five and like four, let's see. I'm five and six days. That's ruffled some feathers. It has, but you know, the problem is though, and this is kind of off topic there, but this place was kind of resistant to change. All the fire services are resistant to change. And I think when they hired me five years ago, I was one of the first people that had ever been a true lateral into this individual organization to where there were people that were resistant to that and they didn't care what um experience somebody brings to the table. They just knew that it was a change and they hated it. And we've seen that honestly, when we started hiring lateral people, we've had about a 50% success rate where you get 50% that are good guys who are just looking for a new home.

SPEAKER_04 27:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:12

And 50% of guys who probably got ran out of their last home, and that's why they're here. So it's just one of those things that over time you just have to build that rapport and understand that even though it is change, it doesn't always have to be a bad change. That's right.

SPEAKER_07 27:24

And like Kyle was talking about earlier, I do think as the fire service is presently, I I do not like it. I do not like that young guys are getting forced up faster than they should be. Yeah. Um you're you're killing the fire service in a hole because we're not getting experience. Um and organizations are having to push people up, pushing people up to drive faster, pushing people up to promote faster. You're not getting that full experience of actually learning each job because you're having we're saying, hey, I we need we need drivers, we need lieutenants, we need sergeants, we need, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah. Just fill the spot. We gotta fill spots, which I don't agree with. Yeah. But I don't have a solution either.

SPEAKER_03 28:07

Because Well, we there's a lieutenant who didn't have his first structure fire until he made lieutenant. Correct. Yes. And that's that's nothing against him. It's not at all. He didn't the opportunity wasn't there.

SPEAKER_01 28:22

Well, and you know, that individual is very capable, but it's like we talked about it's like we talked about earlier. You know, if you're not doing it, uh real time, real life, there's gonna be some issues because you're just not used to those physiological effects. And you know, the situation that happened to that individual, he should never have been and put in that situation where he's a a decade in and never fought a structure fire, but he can't, you know, he can't make the structure fires just pop up. That's right. And we're running into that a lot where, you know, me and you were on a tear there for when we were stationed together, where we had like six structure fires and six shifts, you know, and that's unheard of around here. Well, there's guys that are brand new firemen that are getting more experience actually doing that than people who have been uh officers on a truck for years now. Yeah, right. So it's just one of those things where that unfortunately that real life experience doesn't always come to everybody equally. And there's guys that are gonna fall into that situation where they've been here for a you know, five, six, seven, eight years and they're a lieutenant and they've never been inside a burning structure fire. It happened once already. It's gonna start happening more and more often. Yeah. And it's gonna be hard for us to bridge that gap because until you're inside and something goes wrong, you don't really know what to do. That's right. You know, because in training everything's got guardrails, it's protected, nothing's gonna hurt you, yada yada yada. When you go in live structure fire, that's not true anymore. That transition is hard to to overcome mentally and physically. Yeah, and we gotta kind of get better at that, but there's no way really to provide that realism short of actually having structure fires on a regular basis.

SPEAKER_06 29:49

So I think one of the only remedies, or it's not really a remedy, but just kind of a band-aid is just subjective personnel placement on crews. I mean, you've got to take a step back and maybe ask your battalion chiefs who know the guys the best, like, you know, where should we put some of these people? We've got officers that have never fought a structure fire interior, they're getting brand new promotions. Let's try to put them with some sergeant.

SPEAKER_07 30:13

Yeah, a strong sergeant and maybe an experienced firefighter.

SPEAKER_06 30:16

Yes, yeah, or even just matching the motivational levels or whatever the the tactic is, just to have some sort of thought process and crew placement.

SPEAKER_07 30:26

I think we are trying to do that better. Um obviously we still get depending on how many we hire and stuff like that, you're still gonna have to stick some somewhere. Yeah, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_03 30:37

And we've got all the requirements now for EMT and for this and that, and it all plays into that.

SPEAKER_01 30:43

Well, and that's another issue that you know we haven't even really talked about when we're talking about complacency too, is that you know, that push to promote faster, that need for us to promote faster and be in positions that are open, well, the amount of education that's involved in that kind of creates a complacency that you weren't even thinking about to where if you want to be a sergeant here and you want to really put in the effort, the number of classes you have to take to do that to get your EMT, your AMT, to go to all the classes that are required. When you get up to lieutenant, it's even more. If you want to be on a technical rescue team, it's hundreds of hours. If you want to be on the hazmat team, it's another 80 or 90 hours. When we start doing all that, guess what? Those guys aren't here.

SPEAKER_05 31:20

Yeah, they're not here to train double-edged swords. Because it's a double-edged sword.

SPEAKER_01 31:24

They're out there getting all the educational experience that they need to be promoted, which is mostly classroom-based. That's right. They're trying to go forward. Well, they're not here to experience the hands-on training because the load that they're asking for you to do as far as education to get promoted is so great that it takes a ton of your time away from that. So you get in this natural, like, yeah, you've got 300 hours of training this year, and I fall on this sometimes. Yeah, Sandboard does as well because we're normally together, Jared as well. We're always together taking classes, trying to be better. Well, we've spent four or five hundred hours this year outside of the city doing extra training. So, you know, not saying that we're getting complacent, but there's times where we just weren't be able to be here because of scheduling conflicts, because we're always trying to be better, and we're gonna run into more of that as guys try and promote and do the things that are required to get to those positions. Well, they're just not here sometimes.

SPEAKER_07 32:13

Which goes back to that, unfortunately, people moving up quicker than anticipated because we don't really have the choice, and you know, they're they're going to promote and they know they're gonna have to promote. Yeah. So they go ahead and start taking everything, which is no knock on them, but they're losing that real world experience, like you said.

SPEAKER_06 32:32

100% so funny, dude. I didn't think about that until you were talking about it. I do think that we're we may see like a lull in that in the next few years, though. Yeah, because I think all of our pumped up young guys, they're gonna do like we did and take every single class on the front half of their career. And there's gonna be like a lull.

SPEAKER_01 32:51

And that turnover, you know, and the complacency we're talking about, you know, a lot of the people that have got to the point, you know, and I wouldn't call it complacency, I'd call it burnout, but we have these big groups of people that come together, they retire at the same time. A lot of those guys are towards the end of their career. They're not necessarily happy with us or happy with the department as a whole. You know, I call that burnout over complacency, but they're they're starting to, you know, there's a there's a group of them that will probably leave in the next couple of years. Well, everything's gonna be locked down. I mean, you've got three lieutenants here sitting at the table who have been here less than five years each that are in those spots. We've got 15 years left to work at this department. Yeah, so we're gonna hit a point to where those guys who want to promote, there's nowhere to go, you know, but then 15 years from now we'll have a mass exodus and we'll start the process all the way over again. So, you know, a lot of times the situation in your department is what determines whether it's complacency or not, because you can only do so much motivation, you can only do so much getting people to have buy-in. There's just gonna be some times where there's nowhere to go. Yeah. Yeah. There's no spots to go to.

SPEAKER_04 33:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:53

There's no need to take classes and be ready because there's nowhere to go. So that kind of also is working against us that we have to overcome somehow.

SPEAKER_07 34:01

Yeah, we were talking about that the other day, actually, about in the next couple of years, there's probably gonna be like one spot for Lieutenant until we build a station number six. That's what I was gonna say.

SPEAKER_06 34:14

Fortunately for them, we're uh consistently growing. Yeah. So I mean, we're talking about building another station here in the next couple of years, and I'm sure we're gonna annex more stuff into the city at some point. I do think fortunately for them we'll have that growth effect.

SPEAKER_03 34:29

You Kyle was talking about people leaving. I talked to me and Battalion Chief Mitchell was talking. And in about five years, it'll be a flip. Yeah. And then in about ten years, I will go, he'll go, like there'll be a flip. There's gonna be a big exodus. And in about 15 years, all of y'all will be kind of in that that area.

SPEAKER_01 34:51

It's like in five-year increments.

SPEAKER_03 34:53

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:54

You know, and the problem is though, it's like how many people can you retain because the fire service in general is having a retention problem just because there's so much opportunity out there. A lot of people come here and have a false idea of what we do as a career. And you've talked to a lot of guys on your podcast that are brand new and what they thought they were getting versus what they actually bought were two different things. And you know, I've been here, you know, five years and six days, you know, five years and six days, not five years and six days. And out of my five people that's out of distinction. Yeah, it's getting close to the anniversary, guys. So you get a you get a certificate of that one. And out of the five people that I started with that were in my recruit class, which, you know, I went back to recruit school another time when I came here, but that's neither here nor there. But out of that five people, there's three of us left in less than five years. So, you know, and I think the three that are there, we're gonna keep, you know, for another 10 years, 15 years to retirement. But if you have every class where you're close to 50% attrition rate in the first five years, it's not really sustainable. Yeah. And it's not a problem that only we're having, it's a problem that every organization in this area is having because there's just so much movement. Yeah, you know, and people can move and people can go different places. So I think we got to work on the you know, retention also, you know, and and try and combat that complacency and make everybody feel like this is a place they want to be. Yep. And that way we can retrain more people.

SPEAKER_07 36:12

I do think it's it's a generational thing too, though. Um loyalty in the fire service isn't really around anymore. That's true. Most people they're just coming to the next best thing. Oh, well, that department pays five thousand dollars more. I'm going there. Or hey, they're busier, I'm gonna go there. But what they don't realize is like he was talking about with burnout. You go to a busy department for ten years, you're going to be pretty burnout more than likely. Yeah. Yeah. And then guess what? You still got, yeah, another 20 years until retirement. That's right. And then you're gonna be a broken old man and not be worth anything by retirement. Yeah. Sure, you're gonna be a really good, experienced firefighter, but what kind of quality of life are you having? It's that's respective thing. Speaking of that, and is that your identity? Yeah, yeah. I struggle with that sometimes. Yeah. Especially moving now to days, like I'm I'm not in subgression anymore. That kind of hit me hard. I was like, man, like I don't even feel like a firefighter anymore. You know, I'm admin. Yes, you are. That was a big transition for me. And I feel like we're running in that with with culture of the stuff is always, you know, there's no loyalty. Everybody just wants to come and then they realize, hey, we're not as busy as I thought we were. We don't run as many fires as I thought we were. Yeah. I want to go to DeCab County. And then they go to DeCab County and run their butts off. Yeah. Yeah. And in five years, they're probably going, man, I really wish I would have stayed there. Yeah. God, it's that perspective thing, man.

SPEAKER_01 37:41

It is. Yeah. Well, and also, you know, just like what uh Jared was talking about, Lieutenant Robinson, he uh, you know, he went into training and he likes training, he's great at training, but he we needed him in training. That's the issue that we're running into, too, is guys are guys are about to start out promoting where they want to be because of the needs of the organization. Yeah. To where if you have somebody that is squared away, that is good at hosting and trying and doing training. And if you know anything about Lieutenant Robinson, he's got a huge network of people that he works with. He does a ton of teaching outside of here. We needed an individual in that spot who has that capability. Absolutely. But was he ready to leave the truck? We'll never know. Because the organization and the individuals that rely on him kind of pushed him that way. Now, I think part of him really enjoys it and wants to do it, but we're about to run in that situation where, hey, you're the guy that can do this, you're gonna do this. Well, what if I don't want to do that? What if my favorite spot to be is an officer on a specialty truck at my station? Yeah. Well, I don't know that going forward we're always gonna have that option to just say, hey, this is where I'm happy, this is where I want to be, because we got to think more about what are the guys that underneath me, what am I telling them if I keep telling them they need to do better, they need to be motivated, they need to be what all these things, and then there's an opportunity for me to come up in the ranks and to, you know, protect them and take care of them in a certain way. What do that what does that tell them if I say, Well, I can do that job, you think I can do that job, but I'm not gonna do it. Yeah. So there's a lot of that.

SPEAKER_07 39:08

It's unfair on both ways. It is, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 39:10

There is there's an element of falling on your sword for the betterment of the department. Yes. I mean, you kind of have to think you kind of have to look at a broader picture, kind of like we were talking about the fire ground operations, something, where you would serve better on training so you can affect more people's careers or any of the things.

SPEAKER_07 39:26

Well, and you gotta be you know, what's true leadership? Yeah. Yes. It's servant leadership. That's right. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 39:32

It's not about you. It ain't about you. But that servant leadership comes at a at a cost, you know, mentally and physically. Because when you when you put yourself in a situation that may not have been exactly what you wanted, and I think we've seen this with some of our battalion level officers to where they really wanted to be company officers, truck officers, and that's what they wanted to do. And then the need arises for somebody that's qualified and capable to go in those positions, and they took them. Well, that's not necessarily where that individual saw himself a decade ago or twelve, fifteen years ago when he started his career. And we're gonna see more of that because the need for people to promote is gonna be greater than it ever has been just because of the changing dynamics of the department and the individuals that are gonna be forced in those positions, um, you know, not by physical means, but by, you know, uh the guys that are gonna wind up in those spots are, you know, the the high performers that are already doing a good job where they're at. And they would like to stay there, but I don't know that there's gonna be that possibility in the future for everybody to just stay where they want to be. Yeah, I agree with that.

SPEAKER_07 40:32

Yeah, it and it's kind of crappy sometimes because you don't get those, you know, 15-year firefighters anymore who can really hone in their skills for the new guys and and be that senior firefighter and teach them. Um, just because the needs of everywhere. I mean, that's every it's not just our department. You know, they get, like you said, almost forced to move up because you gotta make room for the new generation.

SPEAKER_03 40:56

Yeah, there's nobody else. Yeah. Well, we were we figured out the other day, so I've got Sergeant Mueller on my crew. Other than me and him, everybody on our crew is under three years.

SPEAKER_07 41:09

Which is like what forty-five people in our department? Yeah. Almost half of our department. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 41:16

Uh we talked about leadership. Um so I think leadership sets the standard. Yeah. Uh so what's the balance between respect and likability? And we want to be liked, but we also have to have these hard conversations. Um on the flip side, we can't say, well, I ain't here to make friends, or I don't care if somebody likes me or not. I think that's too far another direction. But is there a balance there between respect and likability? Of course.

SPEAKER_06 41:46

One of the a good quote that I heard taking a class was I'd much rather be trusted than liked by my guys. And that's kind of the mentality that I've taken. You know, it's just Yeah, I know they're not gonna want to train and do stuff like that, but they are all the time, you know, on the weekends and stuff like that too. But they're gonna definitely trust that I have their best interest in mind. Whether they like doing it or like me, you know, whatever, as long as they trust that I have their best interest. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 42:12

That's what matters.

SPEAKER_07 42:13

I think it's about building a rapport too with your guys. Yeah. You know, and when whatever you say and preach and the standard is, you have to uphold it yourself. Yeah, absolutely. And that that creates buy-in. And that's one of the biggest things. Yes. But at the end of the day, I I've always kind of done it like I do my kids. Like at the end of the day, I'm here for your best interest, like he was saying. Like I'm here to take care of you and do what's best for the department. Yeah and you're s and you. And sometimes that's not always gonna go the way you you want it to. That's true. But at the end of the day, that's my job. Yeah. Same as training now, like it's different now because now I have to be the safety guy, which I'm not used to. But when I create training events or we're doing training, like I have to think of every aspect of some how someone could get hurt by being dumb. Let's be honest. But uh same as an officer, though. You you're doing what you need to do as your job. Yeah. You're not always gonna get buy-in from everyone. Everyone's not always gonna like it, but you gotta do what's best. That's true.

SPEAKER_03 43:16

And they've got to like like y'all said, they've gotta know that whether they like it or not, you're doing it for them.

unknown 43:22

Right.

SPEAKER_07 43:23

I think it's best too to set that standard up front. Yeah. When you get that crew, you gotta sit down and have that conversation with them.

SPEAKER_03 43:29

We we do, and I talked to uh Sambor about this too. So Kyle mentioned earlier around December we start swapping up and they move people around based on staffing and needs and whatever. So first of the year, we've got a a crew a new crew for the most part. Having an an expectation meeting. The first shift that everybody's there. And everything is lined out line by line and they know they know what's expected. Yep. And then there's no question. Set the standard. Yeah, and that's not to say that in June or July you may have to go back and have another realignment meeting because people we get slack on some things.

SPEAKER_07 44:10

I'm telling you, it's like raising children. Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 44:14

But setting those expectations early. Where black and white, this is what I expect. This is what we gotta do.

SPEAKER_01 44:20

Well, and I think too, for the three of us and and you as well, Derek, um, we come at this a little bit easier because we're so involved with the initial training of a guy. Yep. So a lot of these individuals that are coming here, they've had exposure to me. They know what my expectations are, they know how I am, they know uh what to expect of me. So luckily when they get to me or to Lieutenant Sambohr, Lieutenant Robinson, or you as well, that they've already had exposure to us. So it's not as hard of a transition because some of the pivotal moments when they're developing themselves into the fire service initially, we were there for, you know, we were all three there at their burns when they did, you know, this last group when they did night burns at the academy. All three of us were there. All three of us were involved. We've all taught classes, you know, safety and survival, hazmat, extrication, all the things that they learn initially. You know, we have a lot of involvement in those things. So it's a little bit easier for us because they already know what we're like when we get there. Um and I think it's a lot of two just the luck of the draw. For me, it's been very easy to make those transitions for me because I've mostly worked with people that I've worked with before. You know? Yeah. Um I'm extremely lucky here at this department. I've been at two stations my whole time here, and I've worked with the same people over and over again. So there's not a whole lot of conversation that I have to have in my particular situation just because I'm a lucky guy. Those guys already know. They've worked with me. Yeah. You know, my sergeant now was one of the sergeants at the station when I first started. You know, I've got a fireman that I've had before that I've worked close with before. So it's like having those conversations are a lot easier when you have people that you already have had those conversations with.

SPEAKER_02 45:55

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 45:56

Now, depending on where you go, that might, you know, there's a lot of people that get a constant turnover of brand new people because they're very good at that. They're very good at training folks, they're very good at developing people, so they're gonna continue to have that, and that's a little bit more difficult. So it kind of just depends on where you're at, where you're stationed, and who your crew is, because a crew you've already had experience with is much easier to be friendly and to be the officer. Yeah. Because those guys know they've worked with me long enough. I'm gonna do everything I can to protect them from the the negative side of things. Yeah, I'm gonna do the reports, I'm not gonna ask them to do my job, I'm not gonna ask them to do anything that they're not assigned to do. I'm gonna ask them to do their job 100% the way it's supposed to be done, and that's it. Yep. That's the expectation. That's good stuff.

SPEAKER_03 46:38

All right. Let's get into morale. Oh, yeah. Yeah, let's talk about it. So morale directly impacts our performance and our retention. What causes morale? Because morale, there's these waves, these ebbs and flows, and it's up and it's down. What do you think causes it to rise and fall? Culture. Fighting fire.

SPEAKER_01 47:00

Yeah, I agree. I agree. I think uh transparency and information. Yeah, yeah. I think it's a big one, yeah. I think that uh when people are busy doing what we were supposed to do as a career field, when they're fighting fires, when they're running car wrecks, when they're doing all the things that you see that are the cool part of things, people's morale is naturally higher. I think when people have enough information to know what's coming, and there's no um there's no question as to where we're going. There's no question as to what's coming next. They have all the information they need to make an informed decision about what's going to happen. Those kind of things contribute to overall better morale. People who are not fighting fire, not doing their job, you know, that they've signed up for, and they don't know what's going on. It's a natural instinct to not to get scared and to be negative. Yeah. Because they don't, they're scared. They don't know what's coming. They don't know what the future holds. And if there's any time where there's a void of information, these people around here will make things up. It doesn't matter if it's it doesn't matter if they they always heard it from somebody of authority. It's always plausible. They don't tell they don't tell rumors around here that aren't even clo close to true. There's some shred of truth or some I heard or some miscalculation of what somebody said. Yep. But the base stuff is plausible. That's why it spreads so quickly because it could happen. That's right. Idle hands at the devil's playground.

SPEAKER_03 48:21

Absolutely. Yep. So I've got two follow-up questions to go along with that. And the first one is how can crews improve morale at the company level? We've kind of touched all over it already this morning.

SPEAKER_01 48:34

But I think they can just discount what's going on around them and take care of the things that they can immediately change. And that's a lot of what we do. I love coming to work every day. I have a great crew. We do a great job. Uh everybody leaves us around, and we just do what we're supposed to do with very little oversight because we don't need it. Yep. And we can kind of, you know, we train together, we eat together, we do everything together, we're one crew. Um, even though it's a double company, I don't see us as two separate entities. We are one group, and we're there for each other, and that's how we should always be. And if you just control the things within your four walls, it's a lot easier to let the other stuff just be noise. Yep. Now, there's times even me where I get, you know, when I don't know what's going on, I'm an information-driven individual. If I don't know what's going on and I can't tell my guys how to go forward, that bothers me. That's when my morale gets to start to be affected is, you know, as an officer, I want to have as many answers for the guys that work under me as possible. I want to set them up in their career. Hey, this is what's coming. This is what I need you to do to be ready. What do you think? You know, do you want to promote? Do you not want to promote? Are you happy where you're at? What do you need to be successful and happy in your career? I want to make that happen for you. That's right. If I don't know what's happening, how am I supposed to tell these guys, hey, this is what you need to know? This is what's coming down the pipe. I agree. I have to know what's going on for them to make informed decisions about their career. Yep. And I worry more about their career progression than I do my own because that's what matters. The the true measure of an officer is not how fast you promoted, but how many guys who serve under you also promoted. Yeah. What's the morale and the capability level of those guys who have ridden on the truck with you? That's right. And I think if we focus on that, all you need is just to have the information available to make the best decisions for those guys so they can be successful. And if you do that, that's how you fix morale.

SPEAKER_07 50:16

Yeah. I think it's also being in tune with your guys, knowing your crew. Um, I always feel like I did a very good job of being able to read my crew. Yeah. You know, if you come in and I I can notice like sandbores, something's off. It's it's talking to them. Getting out of them, you know what I mean? Like, yeah. And I think that does play a big part though, is knowing your people and being able to have that rapport, like I said, and being able to talk to them like people. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 50:42

You know, don't treat them as subordinates. Yeah, that's true. I think on a more physical note, too, of training together, honestly. Yes. I think shared suffering. Yes. Yeah, honestly, yeah. Yeah, you go out there and do some crazy search training, dragging each other around, stuff like that. By the end of it, you're laughing, you're tired out, something, you don't have any time to think about any kind of nonsense gossip or whatever. And I think that that it's just a big team-building exercise, as corny as that sounds. Yeah, it is.

SPEAKER_01 51:09

I feel like that works out great as long as everybody on the crew has buy-in. I feel like when you get those individuals that don't want to do anything and they hate everything about putting in effort, then you get friction where you would have hoped for uh togetherness. And that's one of the issues is putting crews together that are all of one like mind is very, very, very integral. The problem is we just don't have enough people that you know have the same personality type to put all those folks together. Yep. And that's an issue because there's a point where, you know, and training is great, and that that collective suffering is phenomenal for building that morale, but I think there's a part where you get diminishing returns. Yep.

SPEAKER_06 51:46

You know, I agree. And that that is a hard balance. Yeah. I mean, I've had both sides of that crew. I've had crews that we've all been on together where we're just always super motivated to do stuff, and then I've had crews where you've got outliers that don't want to do anything. Correct. And they think they know everything or whatever, they don't want to participate, all that kind of stuff when they need to be probably participating more than anybody. You can't out train a job that will kill you.

SPEAKER_01 52:11

That is true. Not everybody's a buy-in issue, too.

SPEAKER_05 52:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 52:15

And luckily, you know, a lot of the people at this table, you know, Jared obviously now is in administration, it's a little bit different, but all the rest of us have had a lot of the recycling of the same people. I mean, I worked with Sam Bohr and Derek on a crew before at the same time. You know, we've all progressed now to where we're the same level, so we can't work together anymore. But there was a lot of times in my career where the same people that I was with are the same people that I was with the next year. I've just got, you know, a lot of people have been lucky enough to build those bonds that are gonna honestly last for decades. And, you know, it's easier at that point because everybody knows what to expect. Yep. But the the the the reality of the fire service is with the turnover we got, we're not always gonna have that. So it's it's it's more important now than it has ever been to get guys that have the same mentality together so that they can progress as a unit, you know. Yeah. And there's there's people that don't believe that, you know, that you need to spread out the high performers. And I I don't believe that you make a crew better putting a high performer with a low performing crew. I feel like bring them down. Yeah, at least hit some equilibrium at the at the maximum. You're never gonna bring everybody up to the level you want them to be at. So I think we need to focus our efforts on the people that can be um turned into those high performers and that want to be here and want to be better, and then the rest of it is what it is. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 53:30

I think there should be a higher minimum standard though. Yeah across the fire service. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 53:36

I'm gonna take this time. We mentioned rumors to plug season one, episode eleven, firehouse rumors, how they start, spread, and destroy morale. Yep. So go check that one out. All right. The second prong to that follow-up question. How does administration positively or negatively affect morale? Ooh, we delivery.

SPEAKER_01 53:57

Delivery. And I'm gonna tell you this, you know, uh, we have a good fire chief. He does a good job. And I think a lot of times that there's other individuals that are, I don't think they know it, but they're working against them. You know, there's some times where certain individuals take it upon themselves to do things that they were not assigned to do, and that decreases morale even to a greater level. There's certain people that when they're in front of you and they say, Hey, I want to talk about morale, you believe they have your best interest at heart and they really care. And then there's other individuals that have no business having that conversation with people about, hey, what would improve morale? Well, you were the same guy that six months ago hated this place. Yep. Like you know what I'm saying? You were absolutely you need to be what if you're actually caring about what morale is, I would I would want the guy that's always happy, that always wants to know and always wants to improve things.

SPEAKER_03 54:48

We've all we've talked about how important consistency is. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 54:52

I do think admin is, and I'm not trying to be a butt kisser here, but I do think admin is a very easy scapegoat. So I think that you'll see a lot of people blame admin for things that are not related to admin, especially with. I agree with that. Yes, or yeah. Or especially like cultural things. I mean, if culture is built at the crew level, it's not built from the front office. That's right. So I mean it's it's an easy scapegoat, though, because you can just blame your battalion chief or blame your fire chief or whatever for something that either your officer or yourself has become inefficient or not qualified for.

SPEAKER_07 55:24

I do think information from the top does need to be like it needs to be a constant flow of things. Yes. Yeah, I agree. Of hey, this is where we're at, this is where we're going, this is the plans, yeah. All that kind of deal. Um, which I feel like we have gotten better at lately. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 55:40

We have. And it kind of goes back to what Kyle was talking about earlier. If you don't have the information, you can't help your crew as effective as you need to.

SPEAKER_01 55:47

Yes. Yes. Well, and we gotta we gotta know too as company officers, and and this is the truth. Whether anybody wants to say it or not, whether they like it or not, the workload that we are under has has greatly impre in increased. There's no there's no if, and, or, buts about it. Yeah. Um, we are doing more every shift. There's more things that are required of us. The problem is that sometimes we forget that the new administration that we have in place is also having the same situation. And they, I mean, sometimes there's a situation where they just don't know. You know, a lot, a lot of time I think we don't give credit to the fact that the the administration just doesn't have all the answers all the time. Now, the way to to to bridge that gap is to just come out here and say, look, guys, I don't have the information.

SPEAKER_04 56:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 56:30

Uh I'm doing everything I can. I've got all the information that I've all the information I've got, I've given you. It is what it is. We're gonna work through this together. And uh, you know, you don't want to go to that level of babysitting where you have to tell people everything all the time, but there's people who want to know everything all the time. So we kind of have to, and you know, we've had those discussions, and I think that we're making a conservative effort at our department, especially at our administration level, to be more transparent and to come out and have conversations. Um, but I'm gonna be honest with you, for me personally, I want to hear from the guy making the decisions. Yeah. I want the guy making decisions, and and he's done a great job of that, but there's other people out there, like I said earlier, who are getting in the middle of things that shouldn't be there. That's right. The fire chief is what's in you know important to me. What he says goes. I don't care what some random guy from uh another shift is asking just because he's there. Yeah. What matters is the guy who makes the decisions. That's right. He's got the best information. Yes, he's got the best, most complete information. And if I go to him with a a uh an issue I'm having, or I talk to him about, hey, this is where he can fix these situations, he can fix the problem, and there's no middleman.

SPEAKER_04 57:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 57:35

Putting a middleman in there to say, oh, well, you know, Lieutenant Hudson said, Lieutenant Sambor said, when you start doing that, the can message that is conveyed from the guys that are out there working to the upper echelons of the command may not be what I even said.

SPEAKER_04 57:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 57:49

We're three or four times removed. And how many times have we been in a situation here, even at our department, where he said, she said gets real strong real quick, and what initially started the issue is not even remotely close to what the story everybody heard was. That's right. So we need to just go to the source, is what needs to happen. The problem is people are just making it up. Yeah, that's right.

SPEAKER_03 58:11

We've talked about that. I don't know if y'all ever did this or not, or called it that, but we used to do that thing called telephone where you whisper to somebody and then it goes around the room.

SPEAKER_01 58:19

Yeah, but it's telephone, telefriend, telefireman. That's how it goes.

SPEAKER_03 58:22

And by the time it gets to the other side of the room, it ain't even close to what it started off. That's the way it works here.

SPEAKER_06 58:27

There's always one person that purposely manipulates that information.

SPEAKER_01 58:31

Absolutely. Well, and you know, I don't know how in detail you want to get on this thing, but it's even like with the raises. If anybody, you know, the the amount of raises that we asked for as an organization this year, if anybody actually went out and did the math, if you took everybody that was eligible for every raise that we proposed or every raise that we tried to get and did the math on how much money that cost and thought that first try, we're gonna slam dunk it. We're gonna get everything we ask for all the time because we can just do that. That's asinine. There's no way that they're gonna be able to come up with the amount of money it would have taken to bridge that gap that we all want bridged. Do we all want more money? Absolutely. Yeah, but what we have to do is meet our expectations. That's something that can happen over a couple years. You just keep fighting the good fight. But I mean, I was looking at getting 15% raise on my salary, and there's a bunch of people in that ballpark. Yeah. Do you know how much money it would take to do that at a city level? It's a lot. People need to start doing the totality of the situation and looking at what's going on before they pass judgment. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_07 59:29

I think also, oops, sorry. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 59:30

I've been I've been guilty myself of being a little belligerent on that end. So I'm not, you know, I understand it's every happens to everybody. Um, you know, I've been that way. I know Lieutenant Sambor's been that way. There's been a lot of issues where we didn't have information or we didn't think things went uh our way or the way they should have gone based on some things that have happened. But the best thing to do is go in there and talk to the guy that's making the decisions and ask him where he's coming from because he'll tell you. Yeah. You might not like it, but he's gonna be truthful with you. That's right. And that's what we're gonna have to start doing is instead of saying, hey, he said, she said, just go ask the guy. Yeah. Hey, is this true? And he's gonna tell you, what are you talking about? You know, because a lot of the stuff, there's no truth to it. It's just something that sounds possible, sounds plausible.

SPEAKER_07 1:00:14

Yeah, and along with the admin, too, is you know, whatever the organization sets as their values and their mission and their direction of where they want to go, we've got to have buy-in. Yeah. And everybody's got to help try to push that. And I feel like sometimes at the company level we we don't do that, we work against them. Yeah. So I think that's a big morale pusher also.

SPEAKER_06 1:00:36

That's another thing going off of what Kyle said too, and we spoke about this last time is guys looking through this tiny window that's in their immediate environment, and they think that all the decisions are specifically for that one situation. They're unwilling or unable to look at this broader picture that we keep talking about, and this is again going from fireman to officer. I mean, that's a huge thing is being able to look at the whole scene. So in admin and the fire department in general, it's the same thing. You have to be able to look at this at a much bigger level. You think our chief is like purposely not trying to get us raises and stuff like that? That's not the case at all. I mean, he's got answered to many people, and there's many people that have influence and impact on those decisions. He's gonna present them with the world, but you know, there's only so much he can do for us.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:24

That's right.

SPEAKER_06 1:01:25

Again, though, easy scapegoat in admin.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:27

Yeah, that's true.

SPEAKER_07 1:01:28

Speaking of that, since I'm part of admin now heavy as the head that wears the crowd. Exactly. I will say that there is a lot more that goes on in these hallways than anybody ever thinks there is. Yeah, absolutely. Those prevention and inspection guys do a lot. Yeah. They're always doing stuff. Training. I've been in Chief's office a lot lately, and wow. I was like, there's a lot of stuff I've got to learn. Yeah. Because there is always stuff on the computer, paperwork, junk going on 24-7. Lieutenant Robertson doesn't like computers that much. I'd not go with some kids. I knuckle jagger. But yes, there is a lot of things that go on in these front hallways that people don't realize.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:14

And there's not enough people to do the to do the job. I mean, if we're being honest, when you go to admin level, you know, there's just more work than there is people to do it. The same way we're company officers are feeling that crunch right now. It's the truth, because there's more work than we've ever had and there's not enough people to do it. Yeah. Same way at the admin level, the workload has increased everywhere. And it's just something we're gonna have to just, you know, is it does it suck? Yeah. Is it something we're gonna have to live with? Because it's not gonna get better. We're not gonna go backwards. We're not gonna all of a sudden say, hey, we're delivering this this level of service here in the city, now we're gonna stop. Yeah. That's never gonna happen. So we're just gonna have to learn how to uh work together and be better at accomplishing those tasks. And you know, a lot of that goes back to just open conversations with what we're dealing with, what we're seeing. Um, and when you have those conversations with people, at least everybody's on the same page. You don't have to agree all the time. Um, but it's when we don't have those conversations where the people that are disgruntled or they're taking upon themselves to be the morale police come out here and you know, get involved, and that a lot of times just has a negative impact. So that's true.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:18

All right, so on improvement, where should someone start right now if they want to improve? I think attitude, like your attitude.

SPEAKER_07 1:03:28

My individual and you also Lieutenant Dobson has a terrible attitude if the if the shoe fits. All right, thank you for listening to one of the kids.

SPEAKER_06 1:03:35

Yeah. I think goal orientation is a big thing. I think a lot of guys need to just be more goal-oriented at their level. Yeah. I think, I mean, that's what I did as a fireman, as a sergeant, as an officer. I set specific goals for myself and different avenues to reach those goals. And I think that that keeps you kind of like what Jared said earlier, is like the idol mind is the devil's playground kind of thing. If you're consistently focused on a goal, I mean that's gonna improve all aspects. It's gonna improve your buy-in and your motivation, your willingness to train and learn new things, your humility. I mean, it's which is a massive component of this.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:09

Your your goals have got to be smart. And while you're up on the microphone, go ahead and tell us what that stands for. Absolutely not.

SPEAKER_07 1:04:17

Specific, measurable, attunable.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:19

Well, I don't I don't do this very often, but I'm gonna break away and uh go contrary to what uh Lieutenant Sambor said. We're normally on the same page with this, but I think uh right now, for everybody in this developing organization, it is important for you to take a step back and ask, what do I want out of this life? What do I want out of this career? What is gonna make me the happiest? Because we all know that we are in a position now where people can can basically promote themselves into unhappiness. And that is not a way to fix morale. People need to literally take a step back and say, do I want to be a sergeant or do I want to stay a fireman? Do I want to be a lieutenant or do I want to stay a sergeant? Do I want to be a captain or do I want to stay a lieutenant? Because there's a ton of people in the recent history who have, you know, promoted to those positions because it was what was expected. Yep. Hey, I I can do this, I can make more money. The money is not worth the hassle if you don't want to do the job.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:16

That's right.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:16

And that's a struggle that I'm having right now is where do I fit into this grand scheme of things and what am I comfortable doing for another decade and a half of my career? Because if you get up into a battalion chief position with a decade and a half of work left, it's going to eat you alive. Yeah, absolutely. Because there's a lot involved with that. You know, that is something that you do towards the end of your career when you've done everything you want to do. Because we all know that promoting too fast has had a negative effect on certain people.

SPEAKER_06 1:05:43

You know, I think honestly, that realistic goal setting and then the humility component of it is massive.

SPEAKER_07 1:05:49

Well, like they it all this deals with attitude, though. Your attitude is directly affected of how you take all these steps. Yeah. If you come in with a crappy attitude, guess what you're gonna have? A crappy day. Yeah, you're a crappy career.

SPEAKER_06 1:06:01

It's it's what you make of it. Honestly, you're involved with the city.

SPEAKER_07 1:06:03

If you come in and you say, Hey, how can I make myself better or the crew around me better every day? I agree.

SPEAKER_06 1:06:09

And that I mean that's a goal. And all those are gonna fall into play.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:12

But if you're in a position where you're making a good impact and you like where you are, you have to ask yourself, is this Where I need to be because I have had people who promoted recently tell me it was the worst thing I ever did. I should have stayed where I was at. But we don't know what we don't know until we get in those positions. You know, and that's a personal struggle that I know I'm having right now is because, you know, me and Lieutenant Sambor have really put in a lot of effort since we've been here to be some of the most capable individuals in the department. Now, whether we are or not, depends on who you ask. There's some people out there that hate everything about me and him. Um, and they're not, they don't, they're not hiding that fact. They don't like us and they don't like what we stand for, which is fine. You know, you can't put in that much effort and expect that everyone's just going to be happy about what you are and what you represent. But at this point in my career, I have to, I have to be very careful because the effort that I put in could put me in a position I don't want to be in, you know, because I love what I do right now. I ride our, you know, special ops apparatus, you know, I'm on a the GSAR team. I do all that fun stuff. I've got a great crew and I love doing it. Um, the next step for me may not be as fun. Am I gonna have to take that step at some point? Absolutely. It's it's inevitable. But another step from that gets really not fun, really quick.

SPEAKER_06 1:07:28

I mean full circle though, the whole falling on your sword thing. 100% for the betterment of your how many more people can you serve in that position? Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:36

So it's it's a catch-22 where you know, yeah, you know, it it may be great for you to go there and fall on that sword and make bigger impacts on the guys that serve underneath you and have more people who are serving for you and you're serving their the their needs and making sure they get everything that they need and they're successful. But what does that do if you can't do this job? If it makes you so miserable that you don't want to be here. So you have to meter that thing, you know, as far as like what what is the best for me to where I can be in the best position to make the most impact with no negative effect? Because 15 years from now, I'm I'm leaving here. Yeah. I will be eligible for retirement. Um, I will I I may be the guy that actually had to wheelchair out of here. But you know, most of us have a plan. I hit this time, my kids are grown, I'm gonna enjoy life, I'm gonna retire. Now we all know that doesn't always work out, but what are you what are you gonna have when you get there? Yeah. That's what's important, you know, because these guys here, we have people that come by the station all the time. We love them, we remember them, some of us.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:35

There's a lot of guys that come to a station now, and not a single person in that station ever worked with them.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:41

I know. Not a single person in that station even knows who they are just because of the change in nature of the fire service. So we always have to have that focus on not only how can I be better here, but how can I be better at home. That's right. And when I finish this career, what am I giving back to my family? Am I giving my family a happy, rare-rounded, well-rounded guy who served a career, impacted a bunch of lives, but can separate who I am as a person from what I did as a job. And that's what we need to focus on. And we need to do that in the early parts of our careers. Yeah. Not two days from retirement. We say, what am I gonna do now? I've been a fireman for 25 years. Yeah, I have no other skills that I know of. That's right. What do we do then? I don't know yet. Teach firemen. Yeah. I got real weird real quick there, huh? Sorry, I get on a soapbox.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:33

All right. Mindset, environment, or discipline? Mindset. Yeah, mindset.

SPEAKER_06 1:09:39

All the above. I think having a positive mindset will positively affect your environment.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:46

I agree with that. I think it bleeds over to everything else. It starts with that mindset. We've we've talked about walking in the door first thing in the morning. That starts with your mindset, but it affects everything. Everything. The whole the whole shift, the crew, everything. So I think that's where you gotta start.

SPEAKER_07 1:10:03

But you do have to have the other things. Yes, you gotta have those things. You gotta have the accountability and the disciplines.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:08

I didn't say accountability, I said environment. You said discipline. And accountability goes with discipline.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:13

It's almost like they go hand in hand.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:15

You're cramming words in my mouth. All right. Let's do an open discussion.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:20

Oh, I like it. Go for it. Well, I think uh, and this is just a personal plug. I'm um on the peer support team, and I think uh the my eyes have been opened a lot just based on what other people because we don't talk about things together. And um when you start honestly, when you start talking to people, you realize that there's a lot more people who had issues that you know went and got help than there are that you know about. Yeah. And that's one thing that I want guys to know. If you're out there struggling with anything that happened, you know, and it's okay to be okay. It's okay to not be okay. This job affects everybody different. Everybody, everybody is completely different here. The guys who are prior service military, they get affected different by this job than the guys who are 18 years old and came from high school. It's okay to be okay. Yeah, it's okay to not be okay. But if you start opening up and talking to your peers, you're probably very close to finding somebody who had similar issues and went and got those issues fixed. Because for me, it's been absolutely eye-opening. Not that I've had issues from it, but just to hear from other people who have had issues, went and got that stuff fixed, and no one ever knew about it.

SPEAKER_04 1:11:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:24

Um, and I think that we don't we do a disservice if we're not, you know, telling those those younger guys, hey, everything's not life altering. But if you start having things that have altered your life, yeah, let us know. Or talk to somebody or go to somebody. And I think that's a um that is a uh thing that we're doing better in the fire service is having that open and honest discussion about those things because you know, I work for a department where somebody committed suicide, and I think that if if the if the things had been in place to um talk about those things beforehand, that might not have been the outcome. So I'm really glad that we have started uh working towards being more open about the mental health stuff and talking to each other uh because it's important.

SPEAKER_06 1:12:04

It really is. I laughed at the beginning of that because it's exactly when the last time I spoke with Derek, that was the my end message as well. Yeah. It's like the exact same thing.

SPEAKER_07 1:12:14

I th I think it's a snowball effect most times though. Yes. I know we talk about PTSD and the stress of the calls and the incidents that we run and all that, but I feel like more times than not, it's a snowball effect. Yeah. Between marriages, finances, children, all those things play hand in hand. And then sometimes it's either the nail on the head with a call or it's the call that started it, and it's the nail on the head when the finances are marriage. And I think we need to do a better job of really hammering all of those issues and letting people know hey, we're here to talk to you about anything, not just calls. Yeah, that's just not just PTSD, marriages, finances. We'll get you whoever you need in order to work through those things.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:54

Yeah, it ain't it ain't just fire-related stuff. We we want to take care of the person.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:59

Well, and it's just like, you know, we know with me and you work together a lot, uh, Lieutenant Dodson, and we've had a bunch of uh hairy situations where things are we just had a run there where things just were real bad. And to have, you know, I I know you talked in a previous podcast about a call that you ran recently that was nowhere near the uh acuity of some of the other stuff that we ran. Yep. But that was what affected you so profoundly. Yep. So we need to start thinking, it's not, you know, just because I ran the car that had a bomb in it when I was standing right next to it or ran a chemical plant fire where my skin was burning or any of the other stuff that we got into when we were together, it was something that was, you know, looking back at it, you even said like I had no idea this would affect me that way. Yeah. So I think that, you know, there's no thing, there's nothing that happens that you can always say that was what did it, but it may be something that you don't expect that does that for you. So we have to keep our minds open for like, hey, why am I having a change in my personality? Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:57

We've talked about we've talked about triggers before, and I and I think that gets overused. I agree. Um however, it is it's a real thing. And it was, and I'm only gonna speak on this because it was me. Right. Um I can't speak for anybody else. But end of last year, first this year, run a bunch of rough calls. And it wasn't I've run calls like that before, but those calls brought up past calls and the call that you're talking about. Um it wasn't that big a deal. But something about it sparked stuff from years ago and these calls and uh you know, it all just kind of come together. And I got like I I wasn't in a a self-harm place by no means, but got in a dark place around the first of the year. And it was the hardest thing to come to a peer support meeting and talk to the peer support team because we're we're supposed to help everybody else and to sit in there and say, Alright, I'm I'm dealing with some stuff. Yeah. Because we like I said, we're we're there to help everybody else. We're supposed to have it together. Nobody has it together. No. So that that was hard for me to walk in and say that, but that's I think that's where we gotta be. Yes.

SPEAKER_06 1:15:19

Um that's just not peer support, too. That's being an officer of your career. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:23

You got to be able to admit that all right, we all we all go through stuff. And and it don't you know, we all wanna and I talk to my kids about this, about the social media thing, and I know y'all get it. Everything on there looks perfect. It's fake and it's filtered, and it's we want to appear that we want to look like we're tough and we got it all together. Yeah, every one of us has got stuff. Yeah. And I don't know, I think that's just you gotta be real with yourself.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:52

It looks different for everybody too, because you know, me, I'm a perfection, you know that. I want to know everything, I want to do everything, I want to be the best at everything except for running. I ain't good at that. I got really short, choppy steps. But, you know, and the thing that bothered me the most is you go to calls and I always f I always focus on the what could I have done better. Yeah. You know, and that'll eat you alive too. But that's different from what other people, you know, some people may go to that same call where it's a you know, quadruple fatality, and they're like, hey, that kid was looked like one of my friends, and that eats them alive because just the the the likeness to somebody that they know personally or somebody that was that age bracket, or you have something happen with a child and you have a kid that age, those things are are bad, but it's also the guys that are like eating themselves up all the time because they they didn't do everything perfectly, you know, and that it manifests different, but you gotta watch your guys for that too, because that may not be something that we see, you know, is the traditional, hey, he's got PTSD, but dudes are getting destroyed by eating themselves up, by trying to be too good all the time. So that's something we gotta watch for.

SPEAKER_07 1:16:54

So something that helps me, and um I Derek, I know you for sure will agree with this, is is my relationship with God. Yeah, absolutely. Is yes, they're all etched in my brain and they will be forever. Yeah, but I feel like having that relationship with him does help me get through things. Yeah. And knowing that whatever comes my way, if I just deal with it with him, then he'll make it better. That's that's right. But um we all do have I heard this analogy one time, we all have cups and everybody's cups is different sizes. Yeah. And when it reaches that limit, it's gonna spill over.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:28

Yeah, that's right.

SPEAKER_07 1:17:29

And it you never know when you're gonna reach it, and you never know whose is different and when they're gonna hit it. Yeah. And that's kind of what that call goes back to is it may not be that bad call. Yeah. It may be a some random call that just you've reached your limit. Yep.

SPEAKER_06 1:17:45

And in the fire service, too, as soon as that cup runneth over, it starts spilling right back up again. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:17:50

I've talked about before we cram stuff in boxes and then we find out later it was a jack in a box and it just pops open at some point. Yes, we're great at that. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:17:59

But that goes back to that that knowing your crew, like I spoke about earlier. You see somebody's off, force it out of them. Yeah. Whether they talk to you or someone else, cool. But as long as they're talking to someone, yeah. They need to do it. Don't let them follow it up.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:13

I've done that too, and it doesn't go well. I do the opposite. Everybody that's ever worked with me knows that if I have anything inside, I just immediately eject it all out in an anger-filled rage, and then I feel a hundred times better. So everybody deals with things differently. But if I ever if I ever come in and I'm like I ain't saying nothing, you better be uh you better be on the lookout because there's something going on. So because I I'm a talker, yeah, and I don't leave hold any of those emotions in. So if I come in and I'm emotionless or quiet, that's when my guy's like, hey, uh, you know, I've worked with uh FAO Collin long enough, he knows whenever I come in what mood I'm gonna be in that day based on my just demeanor. You know, I'm trying to be better about that, but he's like, something's going wrong this morning, isn't it? And I'm like, how did you know? Yeah, you know, because I wear those emotions openly.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:55

That's good. I know your know your crew. 100%. And that's not just from the officer standpoint. Everybody should know their crew. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:19:02

Accountability should go both ways. Absolutely. You see me doing something I'm not supposed to be doing, tell me. Call me out respectfully, but call me out.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:11

Yeah. There's there's there's a lot of stuff that goes on here too, you know, that you know, just in any organization, that it's just change, you know, and and change is hard. Nobody likes the way things are, nobody likes change, you know, and and I think that also we have gotten accustomed to, because as a culture, we have instant information. I know I'm guilty of this. I want everything now, yeah, as far as information. And I've had to really do some soul searching myself this last year and and say, hey, maybe I don't have to have all the answers in real time. Maybe there is a plan, maybe it is gonna work out, you know. And and everybody goes through those periods where they're disgruntled. And for me to sit here and say I'm I'm an officer that's never been disgruntled, if you had seen me last year post-promotion uh assessment, that was not the case. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:19:56

You know, so it's very it's very hard to manufacture that too. Yeah, it's extremely hard to just stay consistently motivated, especially when you I mean you have people working against you, or you have people that aren't buying in, or people that don't want to see you succeed, or they are jealous, or whatever the case is. I mean, it's it's extremely hard, but it's you just have to try your best to stay on track with that. I mean, you have to think about your own goals. You have to be humble enough to know that you're always learning. I mean, it's just you have to just see the the the the farthest goal.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:28

And I agree a hundred percent with what you're saying, and I think that uh another aspect of that is that there's nobody that's in a position of authority here that hasn't gone through that. Yeah. You know, we're we're we've all had those struggles internally where, hey, something didn't go our way, and we felt like we were wronged and we were disgruntled for it, or there was something come down the pipe that we didn't believe in or that we had been through already at a previous department and we're not thrilled about it. Um, you know, so being an officer and being in the position where you're you're you're trying to make everybody have a good experience, we're not doing that because someone told us to. We've been there. Like, you know, even in a short time I've been here, I've I've been disgruntled over one particular glowing issue that we had. You know, and it it made me mad. You know, I was up, I was upset with the outcome. I didn't think it was fair. But you know, when you step back and look at the totality of the situation, did it really matter? Yeah. You know, and when we're so close to things, it's hard to say in the grand scheme of things, that didn't make any difference whatsoever when we're that close. The proximity of things is when we really start to understand how it really fits into the grand scheme. And when you get a little distance from things, you realize, man, I probably shouldn't have been that mad about that situation because it really didn't affect my life that much. But in those moments, it's okay to be upset. Yeah, it's okay for that to happen. You just need to realize, hey, I gotta take a step back. Yeah, I gotta look at what's going on, and then I need to make my decisions based off that total view, not just the microbic thing here, that what happened on the grand scheme.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:59

You can you can feel any way you want to feel about any situation, but all we can determine is how we respond to.

SPEAKER_06 1:22:07

And we keep going back, we keep going back to that time and time again. You cannot look at your immediate environment and think that's the whole world.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:13

Yeah, that's true.

SPEAKER_06 1:22:14

I mean have to have a bigger perspective and just a bigger outlook. Yep.

SPEAKER_07 1:22:18

Speaking of which, hit them hit them with it open. I'm gonna speak a little bit about training. So I've always preached this and I will always preach this. Do not rely on your department for your training. Yeah, always go out and experience other training. Yeah. Yes. There's no excuse anymore. There's conferences like every weekend. Yeah. There's uh podcasts, there's YouTube, there's everything. Just get out and get more training. Yeah. And use it if it applies to you. If it doesn't apply to you, cool. Yeah, keep going.

SPEAKER_06 1:22:52

Just had this conversation with my rookie a few shifts ago. It's like there's not one certain way to do everything. I mean, there's a litany of different techniques and different things, tools, everything that you can use. Uh just go get that experience.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:05

Just go get more knowledge. If you're YouTubing, uh be careful.

SPEAKER_07 1:23:08

Yes, what you're watching.

SPEAKER_03 1:23:10

Yes.

SPEAKER_07 1:23:11

Thank you for that. Uh there are several people out there that just want attention. Yes. Um vet the instructors, even with outside classes and conferences. Yeah. Talk to people who do know things and get them to tell you who's good and who's not. Yeah, trust but verify. Yeah. That's right.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:27

Well, and also I think another portion of that is to be, you know, go out and learn everything you can here and outside of here and be good enough and learn it well enough to bring it back. That's right. Like if you go out and get good training and uh you learned something or seen a technique that you never have seen, it's always good to come back and just run through it with your crew or show everybody that's, you know, because those things can build. And and nobody here in the training division or in anybody that's involved in training is ever going to tell you that we know everything about any substance subject. And the things are always changing. Equipment's changing, the fire service is changing.

SPEAKER_06 1:24:00

Have to be receptive and open-minded.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:01

So not only go out and learn it, but learn it well enough that you can bring it back and share it with your peers. That's how we build our capability as an organization. That is right.

SPEAKER_06 1:24:09

And no matter the time, no matter the rank, whatever. I mean, I've I've got a super motivated fireman. I think I said this on the last podcast, but I've got a very motivated fireman that takes more classes than anybody, external classes. And anytime he comes back, I have him show everybody, including me, some new techniques. And I mean, we'll vet it and figure it out and see if that works best for somebody.

SPEAKER_07 1:24:30

Does this apply to us? Yeah. Cool. If not, can we change it to make it apply to us? Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:37

But always also remember that even though we do the most advanced training and we go out and we get different training, the basics are still what makes us successful at our job. Yeah. Got to have that found out. So we have to have individuals that are going out and getting new training and and and good training outside of here, but we also need individuals that are constantly revisiting the fundamentals because no one screws up some super advanced search training. Nobody screws up, you know, those kind of things. What we see is the most likely is the high frequency, high, high or low acuity stuff, the pulling the hose line off the truck, you know, catching a hydrant, pumping it at the right pressure. Those are the things that we have to constantly work on because it's perishable skill sets, and we that is where we get hung up. That's right. Put your hood on. Yeah, put your hood on.

SPEAKER_07 1:25:24

Wear your PPE. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:27

Step one, the very first thing we do in the fire service, you know, is learn the familiarity with your gear and how to put it on. And that is the one thing that gets most people injured.

SPEAKER_03 1:25:40

I have never forgot to put my hood on. Well until one of our last drills. Except for that one time. Except for that one time. And Jared said, hey, put your hood on. We were burning too. I would have I would have gone outside though.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:55

I would have noticed it very quick, I promise. Well, you uh if you don't do that fundamental skill at some point in the very near future on an actual incident, you will figure out very quickly that you failed to do that skill appropriately. It'll tell you quick. It'll it's the one that'll tell on you. Yep. So you don't get an opportunity for, especially this group of individuals, to sit down and talk a lot about, you know, and we're a very unique group, is that we are the laterals that kind of made it, if that makes sense. You know, yeah, we're not the only people that have lateraled, but we all came here from different departments at a, you know, around the same time frame. And uh it's been a struggle, you know, especially like me and you sitting here at the table. Whenever we f when I first got here, you hated everything about me. I did. You aren't the only one. But honestly, like I'm aware that I have a an abrasive personality, and Sambohr is kind of the same way. The only thing that was his saving grace is when he, you know, when Lieutenant Sam Bohr first got here, I was a rookie fireman here, and I was like, hey, um, these guys hate you and they don't care anything about you and nothing that you did. They don't want to hear about your prior experience. They don't they don't care about anything except for this microcosm of a fire department, just so you know, that way no one ever no one told me. Yeah, I'm telling you, so you can't say nothing to them.

SPEAKER_06 1:27:10

I think that is the first thing he told me when I got hired here, which I thought was hilarious.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:14

I'm I'm guilty of saying this. I don't I don't say it anymore. But people would, and I may have said it to Kyle, I don't remember. But did they pay you for your prior experience? And when they say no, I'm gonna say because nobody cares. Yeah. Keep that to yourself, nobody cares. I don't I don't say that anymore because that's ridiculous. Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:32

And and here's the issue we run into is that you know, we're we're all really gung-ho and love this job. And it I know you've seen this over the time we've been here. The changes that have come because of what we have brought or what we have uh put in the effort for is you know, and there's always going to be some people that are resistant to that. And to be honest with you, a lot of those people are just great people. They just don't want to change. Yeah, they don't like how things have changed, and they a lot of there's there's also people that are upset that they weren't able to change things. That's right. You know, and and it I can't fault them for that. You know, there's some people here that don't like me, that don't like Sanbor, that probably don't like Jared, but they're still good people. Yeah, you know, and it's it's I understand where they're coming from. They've worked for a department that was the same way for most of their career and then you had an influx you had a fire chief change. You had an influx of laterals with different experiences that have worked at bigger departments, busier departments with a bunch of different ways to do things. And now those guys are a lot of the training division. Yeah. You know, a lot of the field delivery of training are the people that came here five years ago. And there's nothing wrong with that. Yeah. Um but I can't blame anybody for being resistant to that.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:43

Well I said earlier that we can't just say, well I don't care what anybody thinks about me. Because I think that's a little bit too far. However, your opinion of me is not my problem. Correct. So I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:59

I I Well coming coming from a guy that started here as lateral and the guy who hated him the most it's been a very good transition for us to have been on a cruise together and really, you know, say, hey, you know why I hated that guy? Because he's like I am. He wants to know everything. He wants to have all the answers all the time.

SPEAKER_04 1:29:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:16

We're kindred spirits and I didn't like that because we were so similar. Yeah. That's what it that's what it boils down to. But then when you work together, what do we do? We had a blast. Yes, absolutely. We fought a ton of fire. We did a ton of fun things together. And it it's just a perception, you know, and and um that's been an interesting thing to see here is just going from a department where it had no laterals um per se and then getting hired in really as the first lateral guy. And now just the way the fire service is changing, we can't get away from it. You know we can't we can't staff these trucks without hiring guys that are looking for a new home. And uh that transition to me has been a an interesting one to be a part of and and kind of to pave the way for the rest of these guys that came in after me. Yeah.

SPEAKER_07 1:30:00

So yeah. All right I'm about to get uh sam bohr in a soapbox for it.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:04

All right so hacksaw Jim Duggan goes this is my opinion Sam Bohr also agrees with this.

SPEAKER_07 1:30:12

If you are disgruntled in this job and you do not like it and you hate everything about it, leave. Go find something else to do that you enjoy.

SPEAKER_06 1:30:23

If you do not look forward to coming in here and it's only an off day to you and you just don't really care, just leave. Because that literally is only holding back people, especially if you've got fired up new guys that are extremely motivated and they're looking to learn and you've got guys coming in here that just they don't care about the job. They've been here forever. They just you know I did that forever ago. I don't need to try to do that anymore that kind of thing. The buy in is just it's like it's straight buy out. And this goes back to what Kyle was saying too about the lateral thing. It is a more difficult it's it's a much more difficult task for a lateral transfer, especially one that's garnered more influence is through promotions and things like that and you know actually committing to the department more it's a much harder task to get buy-in from some of these people who have been looking through that three by three glass pane window for twenty years. It's extremely extremely tough and that's something that I s I still try to navigate that.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:27

Well I know you worked for um semi-local rural department for a little bit but I know you ran into that same issue there. Oh yeah yeah it's it's guys who have been there some of those guys have been there for 40 years.

SPEAKER_06 1:31:43

Yeah and they they think they know every outcome of every operation. Yeah. And it's it's impossible. They it just the lack of humility is just it's astonishing sometimes. Yeah. And I'm not trying to just crap all over the guys because I mean I know they definitely have a lot to offer it's just that I want to see them offer it more and be more respect receptive and humble of of new information.

SPEAKER_04 1:32:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:32:06

And I think that that's something that a lot of people lack too especially in places that don't really experience a just massive amount of structured fires fires in general just more um you know intense cause and I think that that's just something that going right back to the beginning of this whole conversation they just go back to the complacency part of it. I mean you just come in do your job forever and you just you develop that complacency and then you just don't want to contribute anymore and I just knock bad people just kind of a bad outlook on the service. That's right. Kind of a negatively affecting the culture.

SPEAKER_07 1:32:43

So another point get them send them we're here so I think we need to get back to the old school mentality of being more honest and upfront with people and holding a higher standard and saying hey this job isn't for everyone with new firefighters. Because you know some people come in and they like you said they think it's one thing and then that turns out to be another thing. That's right. Um our job is hard. When we work we work yeah and we work hard and a lot of people don't understand that and and the calls and the things we see and the things we do are not easy. Yeah. And it's not for everyone and I feel like society has kind of watered that down to oh no it's okay you can do it. We'll we'll let you in you know but that's not the reality of things. You know we actually need not only for their sake but for the department and the community. Absolutely you know I'm looking out for you like if if you're a very you know sympathetic empathetic person this job may not be the best for you. Because it's going to weigh on you. Yeah that's true. You know if you're not physically fit and it might not be in the cards for you. Yeah. Like I'm sorry this job isn't for everyone. That's right hold and maintain that standard. Yeah and we have lowered the standard over the years um increasing CPAT times, making things easier and you know going away from hard CPATs now there's a standardized whatever it is that can be done in like two minutes.

SPEAKER_01 1:34:14

Well and luckily we're we're better than most places you know we haven't even reduced our standards as much as a lot of the surrounding areas have and and and other organizations throughout the state so you know even with the little bit that we've done the fire service as a whole is just doing that because of of staffing issues. That's right there's just so much of a need for people um and and people are not going to public service the way they used to you know it used to be 50 years ago and maybe less than then but people went to a job because if I went to the fire service I had a pension I was going to work 20 years I was going to retire I could afford to get a three bedroom two bathroom ranch style house my wife could stay at home you know and that was kind of how the fire service got the people because they had to be here for that time to get that that quality of life at the end and now you know we're one of the only places in town that have a one of the only games and you know that has the the the retirement like we do. You know everyone else has got a some sort of 401k or four whatever the the nomenclature for a government agency 457 457. Someone's got a 457 and they get a vested period they can go anywhere. They have un you know employability anywhere because the fire service needs that um but we we have to just make sure that we maintain our standard as a as a as an organization because that's what's important. I think that when you do that that's what saves lives in the long run. Yeah it's hiring the right people and setting the expectations early for what we should do. And the other problem is you know the fire service as a whole is a really hard place to get rid of people. You know it's the city government um and and and people get away with murder sometimes not literally figuratively but people will get away with a lot of things that they shouldn't and uh there needs to be a mechanism for individuals that do not need to be here to to be dismissed from here. And I don't I think that every large municipality or every municipality or or county government that runs a fire department has that issue to where it's just so they just need people so bad it's hard to get rid of that's right negligent retention. Yeah I think that negligent retention in the next you know coming years is going to be a big issue because there's certain people that we know shouldn't have been here and if anybody else finds out that we know they shouldn't have been here it's an issue.

SPEAKER_03 1:36:26

Yeah we all have some names probably coming up in our head oh I'm sure all right so let's wrap this up with something different totally unrelated. Let's do it unrelated to the fire service.

SPEAKER_07 1:36:41

I love it what music or artist are you into right now and you just go around the table here we go uh a lot of Christian metal okay yes you're actually not the first person who is mentioned Christian metal yes I'm a big Christian metal fan of demon yes demon hunter and ending doom unbroken rain I mean cultists there's tons yeah well you're not gonna like this answer but for me it's not handworking but um my wife hates that I don't listen to music.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:14

I'm pretty much exclusively podcast that's all that's pretty much all you're ever going to hear playing on my radio in the truck or when I got my uh air pods in walking around doing uh physical fitness I'm still uh listening to podcasts I'm one of those weird nerds that's so funny I literally did the same thing yesterday I was in the gym by myself working out and I was listening to a podcast I call that psychopath and the the worst thing is my wife hates everything about it and if she gets in my truck and I don't catch it I listen to everything at two speed two times speed that way I can get more information in a shorter period of time. Listen to more podcasts she she hates it hates everything about it. 2x is fast though it is and that's why like probably when we do this edit of this you're gonna be like why was Kyle talking so fast and the problem is because that's how I listen to everything that I hear in my entire life so that's why I talk really fast and string things together so if you listen to this one it'll be like 4X. Probably yeah I just hope I I will say this too kind of unrelated now that we got the music out of the way um the podcast is funny because the very first person that you had on here was Lieutenant Agin who I'm stationed with right now we've been stationed together for a while and uh you asked him on the first podcast about like his favorite firehouse meal favorite firehouse cook and uh I love Sean Pruitt he's one of the the best people that I've ever known but Axel Agan said that Sean Pruitt was like the best cook and has never worked in the station with Sean Pruitt. So here I am like we work together and y'all know I cook all the time so I'm cooking a meal and every single time we sit down to dinner I I I give him the business of like oh you know and I love Sean I have eaten Sean's food. He's amazing fascely trained chef I've eaten food at his house he's great but every chance I get I just rib Axel because I'm like you never were even stationed with him you literally only ate his his leftovers like oh my goodness here I am cooking meals for you every night but you told said he was the best one which he's great don't get me wrong but a decent influx of good chefs in the here I will say Kyle's steak probably the best I've had yeah it's it's phenomenal yeah oh I haven't had the steak I'm gonna have it we throw down there was there was a time where like steak was for whatever reason it was a different cut of steak on sale every week yeah and I think we ate steak like three more the three of us were stationed together I think that's what we did we had steak every shift yeah I wasn't complaining though it was amazing they actually uh skeet that was still here in the fire marshal's office used to come by and say oh it's the steak man's on shift and I'm like listen I could get a regular bill for 12 bucks or I could get a steak for 12 bucks what are you going with? And it was good. They just thought we were rich which is obviously yesterday did you hear the uh you know we set the fire alarm off here yesterday no I didn't our cook uh I'm not gonna say his name for this but he was uh smoking a uh a butt back there with some ribs and stuff and it caught the grease trap on and set the uh alarm off here in the station yeah I can already tell you who that was you may have to say the name we actually had a fire in the station a few years ago in the extractor room oh really we've got all those panels on the wall that control the lights yeah I remember that didn't know that sure did I think uh he's battalion chief now but he happened to walk through smell of wires smell of wires and was pumping smoke out of that room well I will say the smoke detectors here do in fact work yeah they work very well all right so y'all alluded to this already what podcast other than this fantastic podcast are you listening to uh the Can Report uh Michael Goldstein and Preach Culture they just came out started doing a podcast uh I do listen to Joe Rogan every once in a while of course yeah I mean and uh was it Sean Ryan Sean Ryan uh but I don't listen to too many but so we'll we'll let Kyle uh rip out all his podcast favorites he's getting antsy you gotta be careful because if you get too many you don't have the time in the day to listen to them but I got a lot of uh uh Sean Ryan's a good one cleared hot with Andy Stumpf I enjoy uh the Mike Ritlin podcast a lot of those guys are ex-military guys but they also talk to non-military public safety type people as well a lot of times and those are the ones that uh I get a lot of information from because that transition between what military people go through versus what public safety and how that all um there's a lot of good information on there about that stuff. I also listen to some comp conspiracy podcasts from time to time as well. It's literally about the same just because you know there's always a good time for a good conspiracy. And the deeper you get down the rabbit hole the more it's like golly I can see the uh I can see some of the correlations here.

SPEAKER_06 1:42:01

I listen a lot of that I love the conspiracy podcast. I think you know what's funny is I've actually uh all in podcast is super good and it's more of like a a financial podcast but it's good about learning about stock markets and stuff like that. But uh I don't know if y'all have ever watched uh or he's a podcast too but that Caleb Hammer the uh it's like a financial audit I think is the name of the podcast and it's basically like Jerry Springer but at the end he gives financial advice to these people. That sounds like a sandboard podcast very funny but yeah anything conspiracy I love all the conspiracy podcasts.

SPEAKER_03 1:42:38

I love the chemtrail stuff. Yeah all right so I've mentioned this before uh none of y'all would probably enjoy it but the Hayden Alabama podcast I like it we've heard on every podcast it's ever done plugging plugging down and trying to get a spot um all right so Bible verses what's your favorite Bible verse I think uh probably uh an impactful Bible verse for me that that's come up a few times in this podcast is Romans 1221.

SPEAKER_07 1:43:10

Do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good I like it that's a good one first Corinthians 1613 be watchful stand firm in the faith act like men and be strong.

SPEAKER_03 1:43:22

That's a good one too man that's good stuff all right anything anybody got anything else all hearts and minds clear if you keep this going we'll talk all day well I just wanted to ask one more time that's the instructor anybody got any questions no hopefully we can do this again get everybody together and you know subsequent conversations about things that are going on I have uh like this is a this is an awesome core group like I've I've enjoyed it today it's a good conversation and stuff we also um have very uh minimal filter so some things just get said real raw some sometimes they do I'm glad this ain't live yeah I ain't that brave yeah well you I think you can get there yeah it'll get there I do want to I do want to start some video stuff yeah I think that that would help a bunch but I hadn't got it all worked out yet on the Patreon.

SPEAKER_01 1:44:18

Well I think also you know not not plugging Sean Ryan again but a lot of times at the end of his podcast he asked the guest you know hey who would you like to see on the show I think that'd be a good thing to do too because you know it'd be good honestly to get like the fire chief in here if he was if he was willing to do it and to get just some different perspectives because we've had a lot of good perspectives from the podcast you know the the you know with Mark Bagley and Connor Bagley um seeing that uh that difference between the generations is pretty cool you know and uh the very first one was a lot about mental health which I think is very helpful but man if you could get the fire chief in here for a long long format like conversation that would be I have some people I'd like to nominate.

SPEAKER_07 1:44:59

Absolutely throw Shane Bentley and Jason Painter I think those two would be great people to have on here.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:06

Absolutely Nathan I thought about Nathan too yeah maybe get some of those battalion chiefs in here if they'll do it I doubt they'll do it but that would be get get them together like this that would be even better. Yeah I think that'd be that's interesting to see you know just those even if it's outside of the department I think that's too also a a good you know to listen to other guys and what their experiences are and where they're at you know kind of gives a little bit of uh depth to the the podcast as a whole yeah if you want a funny full circle guest I actually know that my very first officer in the fire service listened to the podcast that I was on.

SPEAKER_06 1:45:41

Really? Yeah and he got some choice things to say about Cinnabon. He was uh I think now he's still the head of the union for City of Atlanta for fire fire service and I texted him and he said that uh he was like man if I ever have any time I'd be happy to do it. Yeah but he still works down there.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:58

Hopefully he'll tell us all the stories about Sambor being brand new and knowing nothing screwing stuff up.

SPEAKER_06 1:46:02

I I hope he remembers a lot of that stuff I screwed up I know one thing he would he thought was the funniest thing ever is the first time we had like this apartment flood or something like that and we went to squeegee first time I ever used like an actual squeegee my first evolution of broke it in half. Like I just broke it off the end of it and he thought that was so funny.

SPEAKER_03 1:46:23

Yeah that'd be cool I'll I'll I I got some messages based on your episode.

SPEAKER_01 1:46:31

With some I guess recommendations some some ideas for episodes I already my wife yeah yeah yeah uh so yeah and it was it was a good recommendation so we're gonna look into that too what about you what about doing this are you getting a lot of positive feedback uh has there been some hate mail how's that going as a podcaster right now you're a legitimate podcaster these days I don't know about legitimate you got the setup we're all here uh you got some you got some great uh some reels on all the social medias that are awesome I enjoy that I gotta I gotta diversify those reels just a little bit I mean there's always an exact same well in front of the feel exact same stance but I love it I mean I love it there's another same sunglasses same sunglasses for sure that's kind of my thing but I noticed the other day I was just scrolling through them I've got on a gray shirt and every single it's a podcast it's your podcast shirt I mean it's well not always oh it's just sometimes it's northwest Georgia CPR plug yeah plug uh and also is then I got a gray polo that I wear sometimes and every time I do a video I got on a gray shirt we got to get you diversified right keep going back to us um so funny my wife DM'd you because she told me she was like I know my we've got a really good buddy that we deployed with overseas as a uh Cherokee County Sheriff's deputy and he was she was like well what do you think I'm like it it's Derek's podcast it's not my podcast.

SPEAKER_03 1:47:56

It's the basis is fire service but it's it's not just fire service related.

SPEAKER_01 1:48:00

Well I think we're gonna find out you know the more you do this and the more guests you have on the how much crossover there is in between some of the different industries that we see you know between you know PD and and and and and what they experience and what they see and they have a similar case to us just you know most people don't like them the way they like us but they do the same job you know as far as so it I think that's gonna be an interesting you know transition when you start having some different people with different backgrounds on there just see how much crossover there is and all the things we do.

SPEAKER_03 1:48:27

We don't we just don't cuff you and stuff you that's true. But you did ask about feedback that I've gotten overall positive feedback. Yeah. I've got one guy that's kind of trolling me a little bit but I don't really care. Like I just kind of go back and forth but that's going to happen. Do you really?

SPEAKER_01 1:48:44

Yeah I'll go in there and negatively comment on this talked about earlier you know in this two hour block that we've been on now is you know that change man and and some people just don't like the change and they don't you know they want to have a voice but they don't want somebody to give them a voice kind of deal. Yep. And I'm I'm more surprised that you haven't had the people say oh well you guys are so busy but you got time for a podcast. I figured that'd be one of the early you know thought processes that we went through. So hadn't heard that one. Well that's good. Well he just brought it up until today. I just you know I just I just don't know I just know how you know I know how people are you know obviously we talked a lot about that first coming here and how people you know how we were kind of held at a arm's length or whatever I didn't know if that was going to be something you're going through with the this side of things as well.

SPEAKER_03 1:49:30

I have been very very careful on how I present things and you know keeping it separated yeah um but yeah I mean overall it's okay just throw it at least that was your stuff not mine. Sorry this time but yeah over overall it's been very positive. I think we're I think we've been listened to in like 12 countries and like a hundred and fifty different cities and um yeah I like it.

SPEAKER_01 1:50:02

Keep doing it keep doing what you're doing. I'm gonna do it.

SPEAKER_03 1:50:04

And it's an outlet I enjoy doing it.

SPEAKER_01 1:50:06

Yeah I think there's a lot of catharsis that came with it just talking to other people and getting that you know perspective and you know it's good for everybody I think uh especially if if you're getting a positive out of it. I know other people are so it's it's something that net positive kind of situation.

SPEAKER_03 1:50:23

So good deal all right this is what it's all about real conversations real perspective. So take one thing from this and apply it. That's how you improve it's just one decision at a time I appreciate you guys coming on and like we said earlier I definitely want to do this again. I mentioned this to Sambor. Uh Sean Ryan gives out gummy bears and pistols I got a t-shirt for you guys. Awesome thank you thank you you don't have a SIG uh P365 leading for me not yet I mean I just take the gummy bears fun fact I don't even have your t-shirts we mean I'll take some wine the queue gummy bears I'll get those to you but uh like I said I appreciate y'all coming in on I look forward to doing this again but uh thanks for listening to Wine on the Q The Stories Behind the Siren stay safe take care of your crew take care of your family